Abstract
We sought to empirically evaluate delay discounting of the point of no return (PNR) within participants’ climate change policy preferences. Three-hundred one college student participants completed 2 discounting tasks. The first was a monetary loss task where participants chose between losing a smaller sum of money now and a larger sum of money later. The second was a climate change discounting task where participants chose between preferred policies that either imposed or did not impose constraints on access to carbon dioxide–emitting commodities. Results suggest that most participants discount money and climate PNR hyperbolically, although subject-level differences in discounting rates were observed between the 2 tasks. On average, participants were willing to forego access to high-emission commodities to delay climate PNR. These results have potential implications for future research aiming to inform policy development toward slowing global warming resulting from anthropogenic causes.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aengenheyster, M., Feng, Q. Y., Van Der Ploeg, F., & Dijkstra, H. A. (2018). The point of no return for climate action: Effects of climate uncertainty and risk tolerance. Earth System Dynamics, 9, 1085–1095.
Baker, F., Johnson, M. W., & Bickel, W. K. (2003). Delay discounting in current and never-before cigarette smokers: Similarities and differences across commodity, sign, and magnitude. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 112, 382–392. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.112.3.382.
Berns, G. S., Laibson, D., & Loewenstein, G. (2007). Intertemporal choice—toward an integrative framework. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 482–488. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.08.011
Dow, K., & Downing, T. E. (2016). The atlas of climate change: Mapping the world’s greatest challenge. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Earth System Dynamics. (2020). ESD: Am interactive open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union. Retreived from: https://www.earth-systemdynamics.net/
Estle, S. J., Green, L., Myerson, J., & Holt, D. D. (2006). Differential effects of amount on temporal and probability discounting of gains and losses. Memory & Cognition, 34, 914–928. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193437.
Gowdy, J. M. (2008). Behavioral economics and climate change policy. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 68, 632–644. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2008.06.011.
Hallegatte, S. (2014). Natural disasters and climate change. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
Holt, D., Green, L., Myerson, J., & Estle, S. (2008). Preference reversals with losses. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 89–95. https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.1.89.
Kaplan, B., Reed, D., & McKerchar, T. (2014). Using a visual analogue scale to assess delay, social, and probability discounting of an environmental loss. The Psychological Record, 64, 261–269. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-014-0041-z.
Kaufman, D. S., Schneider, D. P., McKay, N. P., Ammann, C. M., Bradley, R. S., Briffa, K. R., et al. (2009). Recent warming reverses long-term Arctic cooling. Science, 325, 1236–1239. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1173983.
Mann, M. E. (2012). The hockey stick and the climate wars: Dispatches from the front lines. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Mazur, J. E. (1987). An adjusting procedure for studying delayed reinforcement. In M. L. Commons, J. E. Mazur, J. A. Nevin, & H. Rachlin (Eds.), Quantitative analysis of behavior: Vol. 5. The effect of delay and of intervening events on reinforcement value (pp. 55–73). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
McKerchar, T. L., Green, L., Myerson, J., Pickford, T. S., Hill, J. C., & Stout, S. C. (2009). A comparison of four models of delay discounting in humans. Behavioural Processes, 81, 256–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2008.12.017.
Mitchell, S., & Wilson, V. (2009). The subjective value of delayed and probabilistic outcomes: Outcome size matters for gains but not for losses. Behavioural Processes, 83, 36–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2009.09.003.
Murphy, J. G., Vuchinich, R. E., & Simpson, C. A. (2001). Delayed reward and cost discounting. The Psychological Record, 51, 571–588.
Newsome, W. D., & Alavosius, M. P. (2011). Toward the prediction and influence of environmentally relevant behavior: Seeking practical utility in research. Behavior and Social Issues, 20, 44–71.
Nordhaus, W. D. (2007). A review of the Stern review on the economics of climate change. Journal of Economic Literature, 45, 686–702. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.45.3.686.
Odum, A. L. (2011). Delay discounting: Trait variable? Behavioural Processes, 87, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2011.02.007.
Pachauri, R. K., Allen, M. R., Barros, V. R., Broome, J., Cramer, W., Christ, R., … Dubash, N. K. (2014). Climate change 2014: Synthesis report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Retrieved from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change website: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/37530/1/IPCC_AR5_SYR_Final.pdf
Qualtrics. (2020). Provo, Utah. Retrevied from: https://www.qualtrics.com
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2008). Recycling: A component of strong Community development. Retrieved January 21, 2019, from https://archive.epa.gov/region4/rcra/mgtoolkit/web/html/climate_change.html
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2016a). Municipal solid waste. Retrieved January 21, 2019, from https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/html/
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2016b). Sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2018). Greenhouse gas emissions from a typical passenger vehicle. Retrieved January 21, 2019, from https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle
United Nations. (2015). Framework convention on climate change: Adoption of the Paris Agreement, 21st conference of the parties, Paris, 2015. Retrieved from https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf
Van Houtven, G., & Morris, G. (1999). Household behavior under alternative pay-as-you-throw systems for solid waste disposal. Land Economics, 75, 515–537. https://doi.org/10.2307/3147063.
Vincent, B. T., & Stewart, N. (2020). The case of muddled units in temporal discounting. Cognition, 198, 104203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104203
Young, M. E. (2017). Discounting: A practical guide to multilevel analysis of indifference data. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 108, 97–112. https://doi.org/10.1002/jeab.265.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Belisle, J., Campbell, L. & Todd, M. Delaying the Point of No Return: Discounting Evident in Climate Change Policy Preference. Behav. Soc. Iss. 29, 64–77 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-020-00035-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-020-00035-x